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Review: ‘Fighting Fate’ by JB Salsbury – a book that follows two fated souls who try and find a way to be together

Blurb

Axelle’s broken.
I live to hold her together.

Killian McCreery only has two dreams . . .
Fight for the UFL.
And Axelle.

He’s watched her give her time and her body to men who don’t deserve to breathe her air. He’s waited, worked hard to become the kind of man she deserves, hoping one day, when the time is right, he’d get the opportunity to make her happy. After a painful anniversary, he finally gets his chance.

But life has a way of sucker-punching its victims–striking when they least expect it in the most devastating ways.

Killian loves me.
But I screwed up. Big time.

Axelle Daniels appears to be the typical college student–parties, hangovers, and men. No one knows that inside she’s a mess, and no amount of booze or meaningless relationships have managed to fill the cracks in her heart. But Killian knows. He’s been there since the night it all began and has never left her side.

When she wakes up one morning to find the consequences of her actions have caught up to her, even Killian’s white-knighthood can’t save her now.

Fate is put to the test when, for the first time in their five-year friendship, they no longer have each other to lean on. When he becomes a UFL superstar, she hardly recognizes the man he used to be. And she no longer needs him to hold her together.

With the foundation of their friendship gone, they’ll discover that even a love that is meant to be needs to be fought for and destiny is a choice.

Review

This book should have been called fighting frustration. Because that’s what it is. Frustrating. Now before you go and read too much into that. Let me explain. We have watched Killian’s and Axelle’s relationship from book 2 and waited for them to finally get together but we don’t get that until about 40ish% in. That is frustrating part 1. I wanted them together from page 1, but that just wouldn’t work. In order to appreciate them getting together, you needed to understand their friendship. You needed to watch how they interact as they are with other people. You need to see how their insecurities kept them apart. And you needed to see their passion ignite when they finally get together.

On the surface, you would think Axelle would be happy now that Blake adopted her and she finally had a family. We had seen glimpses of her being, let’s say a typically 16 year old brat, whining and doing what she wanted not caring about anyone else but herself. She still has glimmers of that for the first half of the book, and Killian tries to get her to see that she has a great life now, but her insecurities run deep. She was abandoned by 2 fathers and thinks Killian will do the same. She doesn’t think he will stay by her side and that he is only there know because he has a hero complex.

Killian does want to save her, but not in the way that she thinks. He was a nerdy kid that was going nowhere until he met Jonah in the first book. He wants to help her like he was helped but wants to be the man that she deserves. His insecurities of not being that man, kept him from telling her how he felt and made her think that he only saw her as a friend (even though we all could see how much he loved her).

Out of all the characters in the book, Axe is the one that I was able to relate to the most. She was stuck in the middle of two worlds, never believing that she belonged in either one. While she knew that Killian is there for her, she didn’t think that she could ever deserve him. We get to see her gain the confidence to not only believe that she is good enough for him but also to be good enough for her life.

Fans have already fallen in love with Killian throughout the other books and this book will deepen that love. There might be things that he does (or Axe does) that you may not like but it is all worth it. At first you may not like it but just hold on to the fact that they are a lot younger than the other fighters and are going to make those mistakes that the other guys may not make.

JB Salsbury, New York Times Bestselling author of the Fighting Series, lives in Arizona with her husband and two kids. She spends the majority of her day as a domestic engineer. But while she works through her daily chores, a world of battling alphas, budding romance, and impossible obstacles claws away at her subconscious, begging to be released to the page.

Her love of good storytelling led her to earn a degree in Media Communications. With her journalistic background, writing has always been at the forefront, and her love of romance prompted her to sink her free time into novel writing.